1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method used in a wireless communication system and related communication device, and more particularly, to a method of handling a shortened resource block for a machine type communication (MTC) device and related communication device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A long-term evolution (LTE) system supporting the 3GPP Rel-8 standard and/or the 3GPP Rel-9 standard are developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a successor of a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS), for further enhancing performance of the UMTS to satisfy increasing needs of users. The LTE system includes a new radio interface and a new radio network architecture that provides a high data rate, low latency, packet optimization, and improved system capacity and coverage. In the LTE system, a radio access network known as an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) includes multiple evolved Node-Bs (eNBs) for communicating with multiple user equipments (UEs), and communicating with a core network including a mobility management entity (MME), a serving gateway, etc., for Non-Access Stratum (NAS) control.
A LTE-advanced (LTE-A) system, as its name implies, is an evolution of the LTE system. The LTE-A system targets faster switching between power states, improves performance at the coverage edge of an eNB, and includes advanced techniques, such as carrier aggregation (CA), coordinated multipoint transmission/reception (COMP), uplink (UL) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), etc. For a UE and an eNB to communicate with each other in the LTE-A system, the UE and the eNB must support standards developed for the LTE-A system, such as the 3GPP Rel-10 standard or later versions.
A machine type communication (MTC) device which can automatically perform predefined jobs and report corresponding results to other devices, a server, a NB or an eNB can be used in various areas, such as security, tracking and tracing, payment, healthcare, metering, etc. Further, the MTC device preferably reports the corresponding results via a wireless link such that limitation caused by environment can be removed. However, the wireless link used by the MTC device is needed to be established, and radio resource required by the wireless link is needed to be allocated (i.e., assigned). Reuse of existing infrastructures and wireless communication systems become a viable choose for operation of the MTC device. Therefore, the UMTS, the LTE system and the LTE-A system, etc., developed by the 3GPP which are widely deployed are suitable for the operation of the MTC device.
However, a maximum bandwidth (i.e., access bandwidth) of the MTC device is usually narrower than a legacy UE. Accordingly, locations of direct current (DC) subcarriers for the MTC device and the legacy UE are different, i.e., not aligned. When the MTC device processes resource blocks (RBs), a different method for the MTC device to handle the DC subcarrier is needed. Besides, arrangements of reference signals may be needed to be changed correspondingly, when arrangements of the resource blocks are changed.